


The Bard and the Bride

by janitor



Category: Pyre (Video Game)
Genre: Gen, deepest beta vagrant song lore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-18
Updated: 2018-11-18
Packaged: 2019-08-25 17:01:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 779
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16664704
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/janitor/pseuds/janitor
Summary: Every year, they met atop the mountain. But there was nothing to say to each other anymore, save to dutifully recite the words of the Rites.





	The Bard and the Bride

The Blackwagon flew towards the jagged crests of the Isle of Khaylmer, ice and rain buffeting at its sails. The Minstrel, standing alongside his companions, looked over the frigid wastes. He has not returned to this place for a long time.  
  
He could barely recall those days of old. The memories were distant and dull, like they belonged to him but were not his. As though they were a story recounted to him, distorted from passing through so many tongues.  
  
-  
  
_There once lived two young musicians in a riverside village. They were wedded by the river, blessed by the flowing waters, and placed in a raft decorated with garlands._  
  
_They were to pay the price of an ancient blood feud, reawakened in the Empire’s fall. They would give their lives so that their families may have theirs. They had no other choice._  
  
-  
  
The Minstrel had an unerring knowledge of songs, from every traditional cur melody that pups sang and danced to in a circle, to every hymn that soldiers marched to on the Bloodborder. Sometimes, his traveling companions would request a song from their bygone days. He would play for them to ease their hearts, but left to his whims, he preferred to play compositions of his own. For every Nightwing he met, he would compose a new song, to capture something of their memory. A gentle laugh translated to a sweet lilting tune, a pair of rough hands became a steadily beating rhythm.  
  
And when a Nightwing left their retinue, their song- and in turn, a small part of the Minstrel himself- would be carried up to the Commonwealth with the liberated exile.  
  
-  
  
_The river took them. But it left them alive, separated from each other in the Downside._  
  
_Destitute as they were, they struggled to survive. The Bard was deathly ill, and the Bride was mortally wounded by the trip downriver. They wandered the land, and sang to the stars with the hope that they could find each other._  
  
-  
  
Every year, they met atop the mountain, but there was nothing to say to each other anymore, save to dutifully recite the words of the Rites.  
  
What was there left to say, after eight hundred years? Standing across the precipice from each other, so close but so far apart. These bodies of theirs- stardust weaved through cages wrought of bone of flesh- would not permit them to be as together as they once were.  
  
-  
  
_The Bard and the Bride were the first to recognize the Scribes for their divinity, and sang songs in their praise, when others only yet saw a band of eight travelers._

 _They were among the first to bear witness to the inversion of the Fall. The Bride ascended the mountain, and the Bard, too weak to make the climb, wandered the valleys below._  
  
_They each found their way to the Scribes, and presented to them a song of reverence. The words are now lost to time, but it's said that their voices were like heavenly sparks, and drove the Scribes to tears. Their song was of such beauty that they inspired in the Scribes the first vision of the sacred Rites._  
  
-  
  
The Wraith still became too attached to their charges too often. She was also human once, but unlike him, only the human essence of her was preserved, while the rest withered away.  
  
The Minstrel thought that she understood the lessons of heartbreak perfectly well, but chose to disregard them anyways. This is why he does not say anything whenever he came to collect the Beyonder Crystal, when there were no other hands to pass it down to.  
  
He would remain silent while she viciously mocked the mercy of the Scribes, and spat scorn at him for his passive acceptance, until she finally faded and retreated into the confines of the crystal. Then, they would wait together for the day they were to reawaken.  
  
-  
  
_Even as they spent their last breath, the musicians only begged the Scribes, in their divine power, to save the other._  
  
_The Scribes were touched by their pleas, and pitied them. They bathed their bodies in the Fall, and filled them with stardust. They were given a Duty, and for one night at each turning of the stars, they would have the chance of reuniting atop Mount Alodiel._  
  
-  
  
It was not a legend recorded in the Book of Rites, nor a tale he would ever recount to the Nightwings for them to spread across the lands above. But on nights when the Blackwagon sailed high above the peaks of Alodiel, there was a particular ballad he would play to the mountains alone.  
  
And from the mountains would come an answer.


End file.
